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To a lot of people, Poker Night at the Inventory was probably just a really cumbersome way to get a bunch of Team Fortress 2 unlocks for $5. We know how gamers get sometimes. But those who took the time to install and play the game were treated to some really engaging characters and fun table banter.

There are better poker games out there, but this is the only place you’re going to see Max, Strong Bad, Heavy Weapons Guy, and Tyco Brahe all together. Well, aside from my comic.

1. The NPCs play incredibly bad, like utter beginners. They regularly go All-In with hands that give you a 3% chance to win if you’re lucky. That can be frustrating when you are all in with your Ace/King and they call you with their 2+7, and then manage to win due to lucky flops. Sure, that can happen, but when you play against good players, this is rare, as they don’t take such stupid risks. The better you are at Hold’em, the less you will like the game.

2. Bugs. Sometimes your cards are invisible. Sometimes the voice files are played over each other. And sometimes, a pair of kings beats a pair of aces, which is incredibly annoying. I suppose that can be patched, and it doesn’t kill the game.

3. The banter is repeated too often. I have not yet heard all variations, but some I’ve heard four times. They should have added some “already played” flags.

All in all, I would want my money back if it was 50$. But it’s 3$, so I’m fine. if you are a [person who takes money for sexual favours] for TF2 hats which everyone are going to own by tomorrow, then I recommend it. If not, I don’t.

I agree with your other points, bar #1. I believe that each of the characters actually have their own play styles, and reading them is a good advantage. The Heavy and Max are very likely to go all in with a crap hand – Max does it because he’s spontaneous, and The Heavy does it to intimidate the other players. Tycho incredibly rarely matches an All In, let alone initiates one – if he does, it’s more than likely his cards are good!

No and yes. They usually lose (about 90% of the time, obviously, if their hand is 1:10 to yours), but since they are four and you are one, if all do that, you still go down nearly 1-0.9*0.9*0.9*0.9 (that is 35%) of the time. They can take the loss easily (because they are four) and you cannot (because you are alone and are OUT if you lose). Basically, playing risky works in your advantage if you are a “team” of four people against a single player.

If they played better, they would play less risky, and allowing you to take more of the 90:10 wins.

You’re taking more risk but your total gains will also go up because of it. As opponents play worse, you will win more. It simply won’t feel like that, because the way in which you’ll lose is more likely to be frustrating. In other words, losing with AA vs KK feels normal while losing with AA against 38o does not. But going all-in with AA vs 38o is a lot more profitable than going all-in with AA and having your opponent fold their 83o.

The interesting part is the disconnect between what people see as profitable (opponents playing smart) and what is actually profitable for them (opponents playing dumb). You see it all the time in people who play poker so it’s not surprising, but the complete failure of the untrained human brain to deal with these probabilities is interesting.

I’ve never been a fan of virtual card games myself, but I was interested in this. It’s a bit disappointing that those are the only characters they wrangled up as characters. It’d be neat to see some others in there, although I guess that would be much more work recording lines for them, the more you added.

Oh, it’s actually just a card game? I never really looked into the game myself, so I just assumed it was going to be another adventure game with the premise that these guys got together for their usual cross-over poker game and some wacky story unfolded (so close to a pun!).

And yeah, Steam is already bringing out the sweet deals. I mentioned this when I got New Vegas, but they’re going to rob me of my money with these low prices, I swear! Fortunately, I’ve managed to restrain myself to just buying Alpha Protocol (for now), since it sounded like a game Shamus liked but with some bugs that held it back. The indie bundles looked like good deals too, but I thought about it for a while and I really had no interest in playing them, so I passed.

When I imagined the voices for the characters in Penny Arcade I always imagined Tycho as having a very labored, fake-sounding English accent. As for Gabe, I always imagined him voiced by one of my more exuberant gaming mates.

Normally with simple card games and the like, it’s the banter around the table that makes the game fun for me, since the actual card game doesn’t take up most of my brainpower. With this, all that would draw me in would be a simple list of sound clips that I wouldn’t be able to hear all of them anyways and they’d get annoying after constant repetition.

The card games that draw me in normally have to be kind of complex so that I get to have some kind of crazy strategy.

I never really read characters with a “voice” if I haven’t heard one for them. Tycho’s voice was fine to me after playing for a few minutes, though I can’t imagine that voice doing the really “seething with rage” type stuff you see him doing in the comics.